Gogmagogs, Galpao, Corcadorca and the Gate: Nation, Representation, and Women in Shorts

Abstract

In his “Greetings from the Artistic Director,” published in every program for the 1998 du Maurier World Stage in Toronto, Don Shipley accurately characterized the 1998 edition of the Festival as “incredibly diverse.” That diversity, however, tended towards diversity of form and style – which ranged from the respectful performance of a contemporary classic through the premiere of a new Canadian opera, from the recontextualization from rural Brazil to Queen’s Quay Terminal of Brazilian folk street theatre, renewed rural naturalism, and new urban realism to stand-up comedy, a classical-music variety act, and a floating improvisational “theatre jukebox” – rather than towards other kinds of far-ranging representation of (say) women or of racial or sexual difference. This is perhaps not surprising at an international theatre festival, where the only kinds of community that can easily be constructed tend to be communities of interest in theatre as a form, where the festive element derives from theatre-bar and ticket-line conversations about technical accomplishments and formal innovations, and where productions that may have considerable site-specific social relevance at home tend to be read nationalistically, as representing their countries of origin as sites of expatriate pride.